This invention relates to a communication conference system, and more particularly to a method of managing conferences and materials of conferences for the communication conference system which performs a remote conference through a communication line.
A conventional method of managing conferences and materials of conferences for communication conferences is described in the study practice report, Vol. 36, No. 12, Multimedia Teleconference Terminal CT-1, pp. 1593-1600 (will be cited as publication 1). This method identifies conferences by conference name, and is capable of managing multiple conferences having different names using a single communication conference terminal. The method manages materials for a conference by their material identification names which belong to the conference name.
The above-mentioned prior art does not consider the use of the same communication conference terminal by more than one user (host or partner of conference), and therefore in registering a new conference name, it is necessary to review conference names which have been registered by other users and register a new conference by a name other than the registered names. In this method, even if a unique conference name is registered, it can possibly be already registered on the partner's communication conference terminal. This possibility is especially high when conducting a communication conference with a plurality of terminals. Duplicate registration of a conference name makes it difficult to identify a specific conference. In order to avoid this situation, it is necessary to review registered conference names not only on the host terminal but also on the partner terminals.
Another problem of the above-mentioned prior art is that when the host and partner of a conference have prepared materials by the same material name independently, it is not possible to identify which party has prepared each material, and therefore all users must have a prior arrangement of material names to avoid the duplication before exchanging the materials.